Yesterday’s post was immensely popular (by this site’s standards, anyway).  Apparently someone liked my project enough to post it in the comments of a post on YHL, and enough people clicked on it — just from reading their comments! — to make a very noticeable difference in how many people read this site.

So thank you, whoever you are — my fairy blog mother — for making me feel like a little DIY goddess for a day, and not just some crazy fool who spent hours cutting out a map.  I don’t plan on opening an Etsy shop any time soon — especially since I gave away the key to the map’s creation — but I will say if anyone is interested in having me make one for you, feel free to contact me directly and we’ll talk: katie@domestiphobia.net.

I’m thinking today’s post might not be so popular.  Unless you like reading about how much of a doofus I am, in which case this might be the most popular post to date.

So, I’m not going to lie.

Last night, I screwed up.

Like screwed up, screwed up.  The kind where I messed up not just once, but several times — one after another, after another — compounding each mistake on top of the last until, at the end, I was left with nothing but one solid, beefed-up super mess and a kitchen that smells like burnt cheese.

I decided to make spinach feta quiche, since I still had one pie crust in the freezer from last time, leftover feta from making these, a bunch of fresh spinach I was using for salads, and half of a large brick of cheddar cheese from who knows what.  Considering the only thing I actually had to purchase to make it was the mushrooms, I figured this was a no-brainer.

Boy, was I wrong.

Apparently you still have to use your brain at least a little, no matter how many times you’ve made something, and no matter how much you insist that it’s simple to make.

For some reason — maybe it was because I used fresh spinach — maybe it was because I used half a red onion and half a white because that’s all I had — maybe it’s because karma hates me — who knows? — but for some reason, I didn’t have nearly enough room in my crust for the egg/milk mixture.  I usually have a little left over, but this time I still had like half the mixture left in the bowl.  So I poked around with a fork, pushing a little mushroom to the side here, prodding a hunk of feta out of the way there, trying to squeeze as much egg and milk in as I possibly could, until the pie crust was filled to the absolute brim.

But still, there was a lot left in the bowl.

Rather than ponder the possible reasons and coming up with a viable solution, I did what any good Domestiphobe does and tried to bake it anyway.  Not without first dribbling a bunch of milk and egg all over the inside of my oven door.

The directions say to bake it for 15 minutes, pull it back out to top it with cheddar cheese, and then bake it again.  It hadn’t set up as it normally does after that amount of time, so when I topped it with the cheese, allll the way to the edge like the cheese lovin’ fool that I am, and then went to stick it back in the oven.

And I almost dropped it.

Almost.

The bottom of the flimsy pie tin gave out a bit, causing my oven mitted hands to close in towards each other, essentially folding the quiche in half.

No worries, went my thought process.  This can be fixed.

I ignored the fact that the crust had cracked and did my best to pat everything back into place.  I set it — safely, I thought — back into the oven to finish baking.  We’re finally in the clear!

Then, about 20 minutes later, I smelled it.

Burnt cheese.

When I went to investigate, there was a wee bit of steam — smoke? — escaping from the back vent.  That’s odd, thought my dimwitted mind.  Maybe it’s from the egg you dribbled on the door before.

So I opened it.

And then my face was accosted with hot smoke.  I coughed and batted at it with my trusty oven mitts until it finally occurred to me to turn on the microwave vent fan and crack open a window.

If it wasn’t so scary, it would’ve been kind of funny — like something from out of a movie.  I felt like Mrs. Doubtfire, only I don’t have a penis and I didn’t catch my synthetic breasts on fire.

I mean, like that would happen.  My breasts are so not synthetic.

*I feel like it’s important to note that I did catch an oven mitt on fire once.  While babysitting.  I hid the evidence.  Kids, this is why you should never get your oven mitts too close to the coils. Or ask me to babysit. Especially if you value your oven mitts.  And… I don’t know… your children.

When the smoke cleared, I saw the problem.

The cheddar cheese, which I’d so carefully lined all the way to the edge of the crust, had somehow — maybe via melting, genius — crept its way over the crust and was dripping cheesy, delicious waterfalls all over the inside of my oven.

Except they probably weren’t delicious, because they were quickly burning on the sizzling oven floor and sending a slew of nasty smells into my kitchen — my kitchen that, not half an hour before, had been filled with the mouth-watering aroma mushrooms, garlic, and onion sautéed in butter.

The inside of my oven, post Apocalyptic Quiche Meltdown.  Someone call Horatio Cane — there’s been a murder.

It only had 10 minutes left.  I could handle this.

I stuck a large cookie sheet on the rack beneath it to catch the drips, lit a candle to try to help cover the smell, and hoped to get through the rest of it alive.

When I finally took it out, it looked cooked.

It felt cooked.

I let it rest for 15 minutes and then cut into it.

It wasn’t cooked.

Or maybe it was, but it wouldn’t hold together because I hadn’t been able to fit enough of the egg mixture into the pie crust.

We ate it anyway.

You know what?  It still tasted delicious.

At least someone appreciates my catastrophes.

Thinking about it today, after I’ve had my morning coffee and have lit a few more dozen candles in my kitchen, my theory is that this happened because I hadn’t consumed enough wine while making it.  Normally I pour the glass before I start cooking, and then I work my way through the dish and the glass, occasionally swaying to some fitting mood music in the background, and everything is right with the world because this is my wind-down time.  This is relaxation.

But last night I had it all wrong.  I didn’t even pour the glass until I was ready to start sautéing, and I’m pretty sure that just threw everything out of whack.  There was no wine pre-choppage, and so my mushrooms were all cattywompus and uneven, clumps of onion were sticking together because I didn’t cut all the way through, and the garlic was just too minced, if you know what I mean.

I wasn’t putting any heart into it.

So I’m starting to discover that me cooking with no wine is like the Beatles writing music with no marijuana.  It just doesn’t work.

But the key, my friends, is moderation.  I can’t have too much wine, nor could the Beatles have too much pot.  Otherwise, we end up mistaking sugar for salt or creating Octopus’s Garden, each of which would only make you scratch your head for days, trying to figure out what went wrong.

Though I have to admit, I kind of love this song.

Do you have any kitchen disaster stories you’d care to share?

Well.  Obviously, I used up what little defensive ammo I had against this cold on Saturday during the baby party.  Cooking for 30+ people is not a simple task, and now I have no energy, no appetite, and, worst of all, no voice.

And me with no voice is like a dog without a wag.  A mime without a beret.  Carrot Top without his… top.

You pickin’ up what I’m dropping?

At least I have a voice here, where I can talk without actually talking, and you can listen while typing up emails, perusing Facebook, or answering important phone calls and I won’t even care.

But if you’re a man, and you happen to be reading this, you might want to set your distractions aside for a second and really pay attention, because I have a tasty tidbit of information you probably didn’t know.  This is top-secret girl stuff that Women’s Leagues across the nation would have me killed for spilling in a public forum.

So the 12 of you (women included) who read this need to keep this morsel of intel on the down-low.

Got it?

Men, you might be surprised — shocked, even — but I’m just going to say it.

Ready?

Here it comes.

Women don’t like baby showers.

At least, most of us don’t.

I mean, even women who have babies don’t generally like to sit around in a setting of forced mingling with people they don’t know discussing different swaddling methods and breast pump boob deflation while tasting candy bars melted into diapers.

As far as I can tell, baby showers are a torturous tradition handed down through the generations as a result of it being forced on a small group of women 100 years ago when one woman came up with the brilliant plan of throwing a party to acquire more crap for her baby.  (And let’s face it, babies need a lot of crap.)  Then the women who were guilted into attending decided if they had to go through it, then they certainly could reap the benefits when they became pregnant, and so on.

And the candy bars melted in diapers, the blind tasting of baby food, the consumption of only non-alcoholic beverages as a sign of camaraderie to the impregnated woman — all of it conjured, undoubtedly, by some evil troll of a woman as her idea of some hysterical practical joke that, for some reason, stuck.

*Really, no offense intended towards any of you who happen to like these kinds of games.  With people you don’t know.  Completely sober.  But if you do, there might be something wrong with you and you should probably start a club or something so you’re all corralled into one safe place.

So.  Like I mentioned before, I’m fortunate enough to have a preggo friend who didn’t want to inflict these activities on her girlfriends and female co-workers.  She figured, what better way to celebrate her, her husband (because let’s face it — he played a part in this too), and the little bugger they’re bringing into the world than by actually making the party fun?  For real.

So here are my tips for creating a fun baby shower.  Except it’s not a shower — it’s more like a baby pool party, or giant hot tub, or at least a bubble bath with those foam blocks and rubber ducks and stuff:

1)  Invite women and men.  Men play a part in the creation of babies, so it’s only fair that they have get to celebrate their impending arrival as well.

Hint:  Given enough alcohol, you might even be able to get the most anti baby party goers among them to participate — albeit grudgingly — in some of the events.

2)  Serve alcoholic beverages.  This plays a huge role in determining the success of Tip #1.  When people who don’t necessarily know each other are forced to mingle, this really loosens them up.  Plus, they’re more willing to sport silly headgear and participate in any planned activities you might choose to have.

Hint:  Party hosts should only minimally partake in the consumption of alcoholic beverages.  The worst thing you could do, as a friend and a host, is to leave the guest of honor — who, if you remember, is pregnant so she has to be sober — high and dry because you couldn’t keep your mitts out of the booze.  And let’s face it — her husband likely (and understandably) abandoned her long ago to the frosty beverage, somewhere around the time he realized he’s — ohmygod — actually at a baby shower, but the bright side is he now has the excuse of drinking for 3.

3)  Serve non-alcoholic beverages.  People get thirsty at parties, and not everyone likes to drink alcohol.  So even though the concept of serving alcohol at a baby shower is new and exciting, don’t get so bogged down in that fact that you forget to service the sober people.  After all, you will eventually want guests to leave this party, and the sober people are their rides.

Hint:  Even so, buy extra alcoholic beverages.  If your party is anything like mine, the alcoholic stuff goes fast.

4)  Serve plenty of food.  Since people will be drinking, they won’t be able to survive on mixed greens and crustless sandwiches alone.

Bacon Tomato Tartlets.  Recipe HERE.

Mozzarella Caprese Appetizer.  Recipe HERE.

Veggies.

Cupcakes.

Not pictured:  Sausage cheddar meatballs, cheese fondue, assorted chips and dip.

5)  If you must have a theme, make it low-key.  Where the Wild Things Are has been a favorite book of Alaina’s since she was a kid herself.  Since she and her super talented mother already painted a mural in the nursery reflecting this theme, it served as a natural backdrop for our guest book photos:

It worked well with the invitations:

And worked for the game prizes:

I ended up filling these mugs — $1 each from the Dollar Store — with tissue paper and candy.

But that’s really about as far as we carried the theme.

6)  Keep at least one traditional shower activity.  In this case, we kept the part where the gifts are opened in front of the guests.  At some modern parties, gifts are actually opened as guests arrive, which can cut that hour where everyone has to gather in one room and watch as the pregnant lady lays onesies over her belly and discusses bottle nipple flow.  It also spares the non-mother gift recorder the embarrassment of having to clarify exactly what each item is in front of the entire room of guests.

However, in this case, we opted for the gift event, only at turbo speed.  The whole thing took 15 minutes, tops.  It helped the party planners stay organized by keeping the gifts in one place, it allowed us to announce the upcoming relay race to everyone at once, and it was the one event that focused the attention on the parents-to-be.

Plus, it was fun watching “Dad” trying to figure out what various items were for:

7)  Nix the ridiculous games.  Then replace them with other ridiculous games.

Like a relay:

Race starts by chugging a White Russian from a baby bottle.

Racers then push over-sized “Amurican” babies to the bathing station.

Using a baby bottle, racers must fill a bucket with enough water to float the rubber ducky to a predetermined line.  Please excuse my boobage in this picture, but I was taking my role of line judge very seriously.

Then the baby gets pushed to the changing station.

And finally, on to the swaddling station.

Once swaddled, racers should run with the baby around to the finish line.  Though I feel it’s important to note that you should never run with a real baby.

Let the winners celebrate their victory:

And let the losers be good sports.

(That means you shouldn’t hit people holding babies, and you shouldn’t use babies to hit people.)

8)  Have fun with it.  If you have fun with it, everyone else will, too.  And the ones who don’t, probably shouldn’t get invited to parties anymore.

Thanks for helping, Candice and Rachel, and congratulations, Dirk and Alaina!

Pulled.  It.  Off.

It’s about this time of year when my body starts convincing me I need to acquire an extra layer of fat to prevent me from freezing to death, so I’m inevitably compelled to eat lots of this:

And plenty of these:

And before long, I find I need to buy larger pairs of these:

Because sometimes this happens.

So yesterday, in a half-assed attempt to prevent nature from taking its course, I made this.

And ate it this morning like this:

And while it definitely wasn’t my usual piece toast smeared with perfectly proportioned layers of peanut butter and maple honey, I have to say it wasn’t bad.

Not bad at all.